How to Backup/Restore ROM using TWRP Recovery!

For those of you who want to install custom ROMs on your Android smartphone or tablet, you will want to certainly learn how to backup and restore ROM. This will work on most Android smartphones with TWRP recovery installed including Galaxy Note 4/3/2/1, S5/S4/S3/S2, Note Edge, HTC One, Nexus 6/5/4/7/10, and many more.

You can use ClockworkMod (CWM) or TWRP recovery to do this. In this tutorial, I will use TWRP recovery to make a backup ROM then restore the ROM but CWM recovery should be similar but with different menus.

*Note: If for some reason you don’t have a rooted Android device, you can manually boot into recovery (for Samsung Galaxy devices, power off the phone and hold down Volume Up + Center Home + Power for 5 seconds, for HTC/Nexus devices, power off the phone and hold down Volume Down + Power buttons then select recovery). If you have another device, try googling on how to enter recovery mode.

Step 2. Once in TWRP recovery, choose “Backup”.

Step 3. Choose “System” and “Data”. This will backup your whole OS along with your settings, apps, app data but it will not backup contents of your internal storage/sd card such as personal photos and videos.

(Optional) You can backup ROM to your internal storage, micro-SD card, or a USB flash drive. I recommend using an OTG cable to backup to your USB flash drive (or also you can use OTG USB Flash drive) as backup ROMs can be fairly large (between 1-3GB) and your backup ROM will not take up space on your phone’s storage.

(Optional) Also, you can set your backup folder name to something memorable.

Step 4. When you are ready to backup, swipe to start the backup process.

Step 5. Once you are done backing up ROM successfully, you are good to go.

Step 6. Now you have a backup ROM, you can always restore your ROM anytime. For example, if you installed a new custom ROM but didn’t like it or didn’t boot, you can restore your ROM.

To do this, simple repeat Step 1 to boot into TWRP recovery then choose “Restore”.

Step 7. Choose the storage you used for backup then choose the Backup folder you want to restore. In this example below, you can see I have two backup ROMs I can choose from.

Step 8. Swipe to begin restore process.

Step 9. One restore is complete, you should see “Restore Complete”. If you see any errors, it could be still okay so reboot your phone to find out. (In this example, I got a “Failed” error but my restore worked just fine.)

Step 10. Once rebooted, you should find the ROM restored exactly same as when you backed it up.

Q&A

Q: Does this work for all Android devices?
A: Yes, so long as you are able to install TWRP recovery on your Android device, this should work fine. (Most Android devices support TWRP except ones with locked bootloaders like AT&T or Verizon phones, which you may need to use SafeStrap recovery instead.)

Dear friends,
my phone (LG OPTIMUS VU2 F200L) has been locked for bootloader & stil I was unable to get rooted it by trying several methods. So how can I recover current ROM installed kitkat 4.4.2.
what about using SafeStrap
recovery. I don’t know how to do it. please help me.
Thanks

Hi – I updated my HTC M8 to Lollipop from 4.4.2 but found that my functionality had been reduced. I took a twrp full backup when I was using 4.4.2 and was wondering if I could simply restore the backup over lollipop or should i first factory reset and then restore the backup?

i have vox kick k7. i tried to take backup and install custom recovery, but i am unable to enter recovery mode by pressing power and volume keys. I tried to enter by using some apps, but it does not enter the mode, and displays the android symbol with error. Why this comes and how to solve it? pls help…

Hello. First, thank you for the awesome and informative videos that have saved my bacon time and time again! I got cocky and messed up a couple days ago and totally wiped everything off my LG G3 D850. I was running Fulmics 5.1 with the 5.2 update. For a couple of reasons, I needed to do a wipe and another clean install of the ROM when I clicked to wipe everything.

Result is that I could access TWRP but was unable to flash any of my backups from my external SD, or OTG. I could see the backups, but didn’t have the option to “swipe”. After many hours of digging, I took a leap of faith and was able to sideload Fulmics 4.2 successfully. I have a backup of that specific ROM on my device but TWRP still does not allow me to “swipe” and install/restore.

Anyone have any suggestions about what I’m missing? I do want to go back to Fulmics 5.2 eventually and will sideload if I have to, but I’m really worried not being able to access my backups in TWRP.

Many thanks for any help offered!

P.S…Phone is still running fine after 12 hours but I am still unable to get into download mode.